Microsoft has gone official with pricing on its Surface RT tablets. Most people have been hoping the Microsoft Surface RT tablets would come in at less than Apple’s hugely popular iPad. However, Microsoft’s pricing puts Surface in close competition with comparable third generation iPads and higher than the iPad 2.

The 32GB Windows Surface RT tablet without the Black Touch cover, which also doubles as a keyboard, is $499. That makes it $100 more expensive than the entry-level Apple iPad 2 at $399. The $499 entry price for the Surface RT tablet puts it on par with pricing for the 16GB “New iPad”.

If you want the Touch Cover with its integrated keyboard, that option is $100 when you order, or $119.99 as an add-on later. You can pre-order the 32GB version with the cover for $599.

The third version has 64 GB of storage and ships with the Touch Cover – it will cost you $699. Any of the three tablet versions can be pre-ordered today with delivery expected by October 26.

Analysts seem to think that Windows 8 tablet pricing is too expensive, however, what do you guys think?

In other Surface news, you can catch Microsoft’s first ad for the new tablet here:

It will sell, mainly due to it having windows, to business. As for consumers, I cannot see many getting this, as it has the same issues as apple (proprietary, locked down, expensive) and also has very few apps and not many developers at this point to port all of the software over.

If the price was $500 with the cover, I could actually see it, or if the cover was like $25, but at $100 additional, it seems ridiculous.

Must be true then. There's no way in the world that all us full time software engineers that have been building business / military / simulation / health care / government / educational / games / productivity software for the last 30 years for Windows could possibly number anywhere near the number of devs who have been banging out those hugely complex mobile apps that take eons to build (like seriously, some take more than a couple of weeks! OMG!)

Also funny how the majority of jobs I see for web, server side or desktop are all heading toward C#... even iOS games :)

Yup, and I will continue to buy applications for the Microsoft desktop . I run Windows 8 on another machine and I doubt I will buy any applications for Metro anytime soon, I'm just not interested. I doubt many other people here are either based on the incredibly negative reaction to Metro, even after we've have had months to get used to it.

I do know that this is a needed gateway into tablet apps, but even then Microsoft needs to make more compelling tablet hardware. A late 2012 tablet with much slower hardware, a much lower res screen, and no app library compared to an early 2012 iPad is a very hard sell.

Either way, no arguments from me on the desktop side, obviously Microsoft has the most developers there and excellent developer tools. Hell, they have the best developer tools on the mobile side as well, but the developer community on the mobile side will take a while to get going since there are no customers there yet. We'll see if Metro jumpstarts it.

Pretty much the entire Microsoft development community will have access to the tools to build metro apps. When you consider that Vista was deemed a failure with a mere ~200 million sales, its not hard to believe that most developers with immediate "free" access to the tools to build metro apps will do so on the assumption that even a "failed" Windows release will result in a massive market to tap.

This isn't like Windows Phone, where the entire platform needs selling to consumers. Windows 8 will be on lots of PCs that will be selling regardless of how quicly people jump on the new-hardware/post-PC devices.

They've got nearly 4000 apps on a platform that hasn't hit general availability yet. They've got confirmed apps from big names guaranteed to be ready for GA. It's already not a dead platform as far as the ecosystem goes.

I never said that Metro was a dead platform. I've been saying what you did, which is that Windows 8 will be an opportunity for Windows Metro tablet apps to catch on. I've also been saying that the iPhone and iPad currently have the largest and most profitable mobile ecosystem right now. Obviously all of this can change, and part of it is contingent on how many VS developers continue to jump over from desktop to making mobile apps, which of course depends on how many customers start using Metro.

How many potential sales are you looking at right now if you develop for Windows RT?

0.

How many potential sales are you looking at at the start of 2013 if you develop for Windows RT?

Unless the Surface RT magically outsells the iPad and/or the Nexus tablets this Christmas for no reason at all, not much either.

As it is, the Surface RT project is gonna crash and burn. The full Surface, running Windows 8, has great potential. But if they price the handicapped version as high as the iPad, what will the real Surface cost be?

I have a few dozen friends or acquaintances who are programmers; a few develop for iOS, a few develop for Android, and the rest develop using MS tools either web or desktop. Of those developers utilizing MS tools exactly zero of them have plans to develop a Metro app or work for a company with plans to develop a Metro app. In short, Microsoft may have the largest pool of developers (by a long shot) but the vast majority of those developers aren't developing for Metro. Metro has virtually no market right now. No market, no money.

There is a lot of potential here for MS but as it stands right now I would say there are more active iOS and Android developers than there are Metro developers.